


this is not that story

by Chirps, transient_transit



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Art, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 04:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12674427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chirps/pseuds/Chirps, https://archiveofourown.org/users/transient_transit/pseuds/transient_transit
Summary: A new town. A meeting inside a coffeeshop. A familiar stranger.("The number 7 is magical, they say." ― Chila Woychik)





	this is not that story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historiologies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/gifts).



> happy birthday, cat!!!!!

According to his map, the café he's looking for is not too far from the station. 

Soonyoung has never been in this town before. Even at a quick glance, it's easy to tell that it's very different from the one he came from, and even more different from the one he grew up in. Everything looks new, polished, designed, crafted, colourful. Once upon a time he may have been afraid to come to a new place alone, but now he enjoys the strangeness of it, the feeling of being somewhere where nobody knows his name or who he is.

There's a couple talking animatedly in front of him as he turns into the street the café is on. Soonyoung watches the marks on the back of their necks bob in sync as they take steps in perfect unison, his heart throbbing oddly as it always does when he sees soulmates walking together. 

Soon, he tells himself. Soon.

When they reach the intersection, the couple turns left and Soonyoung turns right. He spots the café he was told about almost immediately, with its signature logo of a cat pawing at a ball of yarn. 

 

 

The barista is joking around with the waitress with his back to the door as she leans over the counter, both of them distracted. He makes a parting snipe at her as she leaves to wipe up a newly vacated table and Soonyoung walks up to order a drink. His laugh is still on the edge of his lips as he turns to face Soonyoung. Their eyes meet, and he stops, face open and unguarded with surprise. 

For a moment, they do nothing but stare at each other, the shock of suddenly coming face-to-face rendering both of them mute. 

The barista recovers first. "What can I get you?" His voice is very deep and snaps Soonyoung out of his trance long enough for him to stumble over his order.

"Okay. Pick a table, I'll bring it to you."

Soonyoung sits at the table farthest away from the counter, hides his face behind a menu, and watches the barista at work. He takes new orders with an easy and personable manner, his movements swift and practised. His partner in this dance, the waitress, complements him beautifully as they work swiftly in tandem. The line at the register grows as businesspeople wander in on their breaks and shrinks gradually with their synchronised efforts. Finally, as the line disappears, the barista comes over to Soonyoung with two cups of coffee. 

"Sorry for the wait," he says, putting one of them down in front of him, "Today's been a bit busier than I expected."

"It's okay. I came kind of early, after all." Soonyoung cradles the saucer in both hands and blows gently on the surface before taking a sip. It's warm, and very good.

The barista takes a seat in the chair opposite him and leans his elbows on the table as he adds sugar to his own cup, stirring before he takes a drink himself. He sighs in satisfaction and smiles mildly at Soonyoung over his cup. "No more just milkshakes?"

It's lightly teasing in that old, familiar way of Wonwoo's, even though the person himself feels like a stranger. Soonyoung raises his head to look at him properly, watching his mouth wrap around the lip of his cup as he tilts it back, the motion one that has been seen countless times but which feels all the more foreign for not having seen it for seven years. He looks good, looks so much better than the last time Soonyoung had seen him, face shadowed and a line of tiredness evident in his spine as he walked away from what had been their home. 

Of course, Wonwoo hadn't looked anything but closed and mutely unhappy for that entire period of his life, and when the mark on his wrist had finally driven him to leave, Soonyoung had almost been glad to see him go.

Almost, but not quite. Even then, Soonyoung had been too selfish to let Wonwoo go entirely. 

But sitting here like this now, so many years later with both of them changed and grown, makes it feel like an entirely different story.

 

 

Soonyoung lets his own mouth curve up in a wry smile. "Nah. Started drinking coffee a few years ago. I still prefer milkshakes, though."

"I'm surprised. Seeing the face you made after you tried it for the first time, I wouldn't have been particularly shocked if you had just stubbornly refused to try it ever again." 

Soonyoung shrugged. "It felt kind of weird to get a milkshake in front of my boss whenever we had discussions in a café, so eventually I just learnt to drink it. The well-made ones aren't half-bad, really."

"Would you say my coffee is well-made?" Wonwoo nods towards Soonyoung's cup and smirks, just a little.

It's nice to see that at the same time, nothing has really changed. "Yeah," admits Soonyoung, and the smug, crooked smile on Wonwoo's face looks exactly as it did seven years ago.

The patrons next to them get up to leave, and the waitress comes over to wipe down the table with a cloth in hand. Her mark peeks out from under her sleeve, and Soonyoung can't help the way he stares past Wonwoo's ear at what he can see of it. 

Wonwoo either doesn't notice, or chooses to ignore it. "How's life for you now, Soonyoung? What do you do for a living?"

Soonyoung grins a little, nervous. "Ah, well, it's kind of boring. I'm the product marketing manager of a company that mostly sells kitchenware. They're called Mounteen, I don't know if you've heard of them? They're not very big, they're a pretty recently established company."

"Ah. How is it?"

"I mean, the work is alright and the company is alright. The people who I work with are great, though."

There's an odd expression on Wonwoo's face. "Made a lot of friends, then?" he asks, spinning his half-empty cup idly between his hands.

"Mmhm. We're a pretty close group, we go out for dinner every Friday."

"I see. That's good."

"Yeah." Soonyoung laughs a little. "It's kind of weird though. Selling cutlery isn't something I ever imagined I would be doing, even as I got my degree in marketing."

"As long as you enjoy going to work, I think whatever it is is fine." Wonwoo looks away a little as he says this, looks out of the edge of his vision to survey his shop. The waitress is closing up, cleaning the machines and packing up the things behind the counter as the last few patrons file out the door. 

"I was surprised when you told me you owned a coffee shop," says Soonyoung carefully, watching him.

Wonwoo laughs. He doesn't sound embarrassed at all. "Yeah, it wasn't something that I thought I'd end up doing, either, but I'm here now, and it makes me happy." He turns back, and the curve of his mouth is soft and satisfied. There's real pride in his face as he tilts his chin up at Soonyoung incrementally, as if challenging him to find fault with what he's done with his life.

Rather than feeling the urge to criticise, Soonyoung feels a little lost. He isn't sure where the Wonwoo he had known had gone, the one who would've scoffed at the idea of doing a hospitality job for the rest of his life, the one who had had grand plans and the ego to pull them off. This Wonwoo is still strong, but he seems to be content with what he has instead of reaching for the stars. 

This Wonwoo seems to realise that Soonyoung isn't going to make fun of him and deflates a little. Soonyoung wonders who he's had to rebuff in taking this path, and what kind of things they said to him. 

Wonwoo looks down and wipes at the edge of the cup with his fingers. He doesn't look up as he asks, "Was it hard for you after I left?" 

After Wonwoo had left to go chase what he wanted, Soonyoung had been left by himself in a two-person room. Their dorms hadn't been particularly big, but Wonwoo's absence had made it feel empty so tangibly that sometimes Soonyoung shut himself in the closet just to feel cramped again. 

Or perhaps Soonyoung just missed bumping into Wonwoo whenever he turned around. It just wasn't the same. He'd automatically make a low quip meant for Wonwoo's ears and then the smile on his face would die because when he looked to the spot next to him there was nothing there except empty space. He was perfectly capable of doing things by himself, it just felt unnerving somehow now that he didn't know where Wonwoo was or what he was doing and couldn't drag him back in close with an easy swing of his arm. They'd been stuck together for so long that they'd forgotten what it was like to be apart. 

Soonyoung had hated it, but he'd also known that their decision to move apart had been the correct one, even as every person that had ever known them bombarded him with questions. Why had Wonwoo left? Where had he gone? Why hadn't he taken Soonyoung with him?

It had been none of their business. Soonyoung had kept his mouth shut for the few remaining years he had spent there then moved out, leaving all of it behind him anyway. 

"It was okay," says Soonyoung, with a little vapid smile. 

"I see."

 

 

"It's been nineteen years since we first met, huh," Wonwoo continues after a moment, conversationally, "Do you remember?"

Soonyoung only shrugs, but he does. He remembers being eight years old and getting dragged across the playground by one of his friends he had had at that time. 

"Where are we going?" he'd asked, stumbling along behind them.

The friend had giggled. "You'll see."

They took him all the way to the back of the playground, where there was a fence and a big tree spreading its branches above them. There had been a boy, sitting by himself and turning the pages of a huge book. 

"This is Wonwoo. Wonwoo, this is Soonyoung. You guys should be friends. You'll definitely be good friends," they'd giggled, and left him there to stand awkwardly watching Wonwoo.

"What're you reading?" he had asked, after a few moments. 

Wonwoo had looked at him evenly. "A book."

That first impression was really all Soonyoung had needed to know about the kind of person Wonwoo was. With a terrible sense of humour, a penchant for solitude and a hard-headed stubbornness even as a child, Wonwoo liked to use his shy and meek exterior to fool people into believing that he didn't really have as much to say as he did. 

The friend had let him meet someone as important to him as Wonwoo, but Soonyoung hadn't been grateful enough to remember that friend's name and face. Soonyoung might have been fooled and not met the real Wonwoo if not for that friend from long ago that had introduced them to each other. 

Or perhaps fate—or something like that—would have meddled, if it wasn't already meddling. Everyone else seemed to think it would. Soonyoung and Wonwoo were so sweet, they said, watching, always watching, I hope it lasts. I hope they can be happy like this. 

They grew gradually older next to each other, all the time becoming more and more aware of the eyes on them. It was suffocating; they were both their own people with their own thoughts and differences yet still other people couldn't see anything beyond the marks on their arms.

 

 

It was as if once people saw that they matched, it became impossible for them to imagine that Soonyoung and Wonwoo could be anything other than perfect together. Their relationship was the stuff of romcoms, of fairytales, of legends. To find somebody as important as your soulmate when you were still a child, and to grow up together when most people spent their entire lives looking for their other half! What fate, what luck, what destiny.

"Do you still think it was a good idea?" he finds himself asking. Wonwoo looks at him, seemingly slightly confused.

"Taking a break from each other for seven years before meeting again, I mean," he clarifies, clenching his hands together under the table where they can't be seen. 

It's perhaps a little cowardly of him, making Wonwoo say it first because he's scared to be honest, but Wonwoo doesn't miss a beat as he answers, "Yes. Do you?"

He's as reliable as ever. Soonyoung is thankful. "I do." It gives him the courage he needs to keep going. "I missed you, but it was worth it." He raises his head as he says it, because it feels like meeting Wonwoo's eyes for this is important. 

Wonwoo looks back at him, measuredly, and Soonyoung remembers being younger and hearing him say, with that same expression, "Soonyoung, don't you ever feel like you can't be anything else but mine?"

He had just come home after a day of classes to Wonwoo's (clumsily) home-cooked food and had been in the middle of stuffing his face with his brain on autopilot, so he hadn't quite registered the question. "Mmmh?"

"Like we only come in a pair. Like there's no me or you, only an "us" and we'll always be the same as each other."

Soonyoung had swallowed. The rice had slid reluctantly down his throat, but it had felt like every grain was still there, clogging it up, when he had spoken. "Like the only interesting thing about us is that we're soulmates. Like it's unthinkable that we could exist as individuals."

They had both felt cramped and stuck and watched but nothing had changed until Wonwoo had chafed enough that he decided he wanted out. Soonyoung had almost expected this to happen eventually the moment Wonwoo had said that he'd stay here in this town, here in this mediocre university, here with Soonyoung. He had almost known that it wasn't a promise Wonwoo would be able to keep. 

It hadn't stopped him from hoping, and now Wonwoo said what he had really been thinking, with his arms crossed too casually behind his head as he leaned heavily on the back of his chair. "I want to go somewhere else."

I'm going to go somewhere else, he had meant, and they had both known it. Wonwoo's ambition had always been bigger than their small town, and not being seen as something, _someone_ separate from Soonyoung had only driven him out faster. It would've happened anyway, or so he told himelf, but that didn't make it any easier. 

Wonwoo could've always done better, but he had chosen Soonyoung. He chose a young professor of astronomy now, one whose eyes shone like the stars she studied whenever she spoke about them.

"I want to study under her," he had said, as he sat night after night with textbook after textbook laid out in front of him as Soonyoung lay with his back to him, trying to fall asleep but unable to stop staring at the outline of Wonwoo's shadow cast onto the wall in front of him, "She loves and understands planets and outer space so much. I want to love and understand it like she does." 

It was like a fire had lit him up from the inside. Wonwoo had looked more alive in those months leading up to his transfer application than he had that entire past year, and though Soonyoung had been behind him one hundred percent, the small, selfish part of him that had rejoiced at Wonwoo's staying now lamented his going. 

"Did you get ever meet to meet your professor?" Soonyoung asks, now, in this place that Wonwoo has chosen to meet him.

"The astronomy professor?" He laughs, surprised. "Of course you'd remember," he says, and the look he gives Soonyoung is fond. Soonyoung hadn't realised that he'd missed seeing it. 

"I did get to meet her, yes. I also got to take most of her classes." Wonwoo sounds nostalgic, wistful. "She was every bit as wonderful as I imagined her to be, every bit as passionate, and every bit as smart. I stayed behind to ask questions a lot, and if she didn't know the answer, she'd always find out for me by the next class.

"She liked me a lot. I did very well in all my classes, and in my third year, I asked if she would supervise my doctorate when I eventually got there. She laughed and told me to ask again in a few years' time, but she must've seen something serious in my face because then she asked me if I really wanted to do this for the rest of my life.

"I said, why not? Was I not good enough? Did she think I lacked the skill? She hesitated, shook her head. 

"She said she wasn't sure if I was happy doing this. She said I always looked so driven, like I was trying to prove something to someone, and wouldn't stop until I got it. She said she wasn't sure if I really liked astronomy at all, if I had just latched onto it as something I felt like I could be proud of myself for doing. Something I could tell others I did as a job without feeling like they'd judge me for "wasting my potential" even if I didn't really care about what it was at all. 

"She said that there was nothing wrong with that, not really, but she wanted me to be sure, because it felt like I was trying to force myself into loving it by watching her love it. I couldn't learn to love it by watching her; it had to come from inside me, it had to be something I felt.

"So I went away, and I thought about it. I told myself that if I still wanted that doctorate when I finished my undergraduate degree, then I'd have proven her wrong, and I could confidently walk up to her and ask her to be my supervisor again. And she'd say yes, because then she'd know I still wanted it. 

"But it got harder and harder. I think I'd realised that she had been right subconsciously, but I hadn't want to admit it, so I just continued to slog through the classes and forced myself to feel like I wanted to know the secrets of the night sky whenever I stared up at it. I didn't really care, they were beautiful enough for me as they were, I'd just wanted to do something I considered "smart" and appropriate for myself—and I'd decided it would be this.

"In the end I just walked out one day after deciding I was done. That's what you wanted to know, right? How I ended up here in this faraway town, the owner of a coffee shop." He shrugs, self-deprecatingly. "I really did just kind of fall into it, but I like it. This is something I want to be doing. So I'll just keep doing it, as long as it gives me satisfaction."

Soonyoung says, "As long as you like working here, it was the right choice."

Wonwoo smiles. "Thank you." For not judging me for this, he doesn't say, but Soonyoung can hear it anyway.

The waitress stops behind Wonwoo and taps him on the shoulder. She looks at him curiously, but doesn't ask, just tells Wonwoo that she's finished cleaning up and is about to head home. Soonyoung sticks his nose into the mouth of cup and drains the last few dregs of his coffee, pretending to be absorbed in the task as Wonwoo asks her a few questions then gestures finally that it's okay for her to leave. 

The door closes with a thunk behind her, and Soonyoung finds himself truly alone with Wonwoo for the first time in a very long time. It doesn't feel uncomfortable like he feared it might, just new and unfamiliar. They had wanted to see who they could be away from the suffocating expectations of being soulmates, but it's still Wonwoo, and Soonyoung still knows him. 

"Do you remember what we said when we agree to do this?" Wonwoo hides his nervousness well, but Soonyoung sees it in how he keeps turning his emptied cup around and around and around with his fingertips. It's easier to read him than it should really be, after so long. 

"Of course. We said we'd separate for seven years, not contact each other, and see what happens when we aren't just "the soulmates" anymore." Soonyoung traces a finger around the edge of his saucer. "See what happens when we're without each other. Then, when we meet again, we'll think about if we want to try again or see what happens after we wait some more." He pauses, then looks up. 

Wonwoo catches his gaze and holds it. "Do you want to try again?" It comes out blunt, but Soonyoung understands it's just because he's scared of the answer he might get, whether it's what he expects, if it's going to line up to what he wants.

And maybe Soonyoung should think about it more. Maybe he should take a few minutes to really mull it over, really think about what his answer would mean. Maybe he should consider every little thing, not just what he wants in the heat of the moment, the heat of this moment. 

But there was always ever only going to be one answer. 

It's obvious. He's Soonyoung, and the person waiting for his reply is Wonwoo. 

"Yeah. I want to try again." 

This Wonwoo might look different to the one from seven years ago, might act different or want different things, but he's still Wonwoo, and they still belong together.

And when he reaches across the table to link their hands with a smile, Soonyoung knows he agrees.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> juli:  
> hey cat! i asked danners what kind of things you liked and tried to incorporate them :3c i hope you like the fic~  
> happy (belated, sorry ;;w;;) birthday and thanks as always for taking care of swn, ilyyyyyy <33333  
> (sorry again for being late;;;;;)
> 
> chips:  
> hello catttt. here's a (late but honestly you're prob used to getting stuff late from me by now hfdshfs) bday present.  
> i hope i can be a better friend to you in the future when i can stop filling up my schedule with so many things ahhh.  
> i hope you had a great birthday!!! im love u


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